Working with living krill – the people and the places

Abstract

The fascination of Antarctic scientists with Antarctic krill and their capabilities has a long and varied history, and prompted many scientists to maintain and manipulate krill under laboratory conditions. Starting in the Discovery era with Mackintosh at the King Edward Point labs on South Georgia, 1930, scientists have collected krill from sailing vessels, small boats, inflatable zodiacs and large ice-breaking vessels. Krill have been maintained in small and large jars, deep rectangular tanks, large round tanks and in flow-through and recycling systems. They have been maintained both on board research vessels and in laboratories, in flowing seawater systems at ambient conditions and in temperature-controlled environmental rooms. A few researchers have transported living krill back to their home laboratories, for example tropical laboratories in Japan (Murano) and Australia (Ikeda), temperate laboratories (Nicol) in Australia, a northern European laboratory in Germany (Marschall) and a sunny maritime laboratory in California (Ross and Quetin). The goals have been varied: short-term experiments to understand in situ physiological rates, long-term experiments to test the effects of manipulations or controlled changes in environmental conditions, and behavioral responses. We take you on a brief historical tour as we trace the lineage of modern day research on living Antarctic krill.

Keywords:

• Antarctic
• Krill
• History
• Field studies
• Laboratory studies
• Technology
• Holding
• Transporting

Acknowledgments

Many people were of assistance as we searched for information and illustrations of the people who have worked with living krill. In particular we wish to acknowledge A. Clarke, G. Tarling and A. Atkinson of BAS; M. O. Amsler, Sister M. O. Cahoon and D. Schenborn, those who worked with Dr. M. A., for information on Dr. Mary Alice McWhinnie; F. Buchholz of AWI; P. Dixon of AIMS and S. Nicol of the Australian Antarctic Division for information on Dr. T. Ikeda; U. Kils of AWI, now of Rutgers; J. Cuzin-Roudy, retired from Villefranche sur Mer; W. Hamner of UCLA; S. Kawaguchi, now of the Australian Antarctic Division, for information on the activities of the Port of Nagoya Aquarium. We also would like to thank S. Kawaguchi and S. Nicol who first asked us to speak about the people involved in conducting research on living krill. Their request led us on a fun trip down memory lane as we renewed our contacts with people we had met over the past 20+ years or followed up leads given by others, and went on a search through our slide collection for people pictures. Any omissions are due solely to lack of information on our part. We also thank two reviewers (F. Buchholz and M. Murano) for their additions and attention to detail. This publication was partially supported by National Science Foundation, Office of Polar Programs Grant OPP9632763 (Palmer LTER) and OPP9909933 (Southern Ocean GLOBEC), and the Marine Science Institute, University of California at Santa Barbara. LTER Publication Number 239.